November 2, 2016

November 2, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eight response to “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2007) by Jaak Panksepp. “With cortico-cognitive maturation, the diverse emotional-musical communication of infants begin to bifurcate into two seemingly distinct streams” of speech. This demonstrates that “the left hemisphere participates more in defense mechanisms than the right.” Also, this is why “patients with right hemispheric damage, following paralysis of the left side of the body” readily “deny their self-evident paralysis, a clear logical absurdity.”

To deny the existence of one’s own body is a main characteristic of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In NVB communicators see themselves as talking heads. It is hard to put our finger on our body as embodied sound is so easily distracted from that by what we say. As we engage in NVB, we are like those patients with brain damage, who “prefer to confabulate about their lives in” what only seems to be “affectively positive, self-protective ways.” NVB is basically dissociative in nature.

Apparently, our brains work in such a way that “when the left-hemisphere is less grounded in subcortical/right hemispheric emotional “soil”, it becomes more adept at self-serving rationalizations.” Panksepp is getting really very poetic here. In NVB, we talk at each other, but only in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) do we talk with each other. The difference between SVB and NVB is in the ‘motivation’ of the speaker.

In SVB, we are always socially-motivated to speak, as the sound of the speaker’s voice has an approach-inducing and connecting quality, but in NVB, our social urges are reflexively inhibited as the voice of the speaker has an aversive, avoidance and escape-eliciting quality. We achieve “social attachment” in SVB and “separation-distress” in NVB.